The #1 Article On Rolling Stone This Weekend Wasn't About The Grammys. No. It Was One Of The Most Vitriolic, Hateful Takedowns of Tom Brady These Eyes Have Ever Seen, Claiming He Ruined The Film "80 For Brady"
At the end of 80 for Brady, a new movie concerning the adventures of a group of four older women who really like Tom Brady, our fearsome foursome is sitting on the beach, talking about retirement. Then, they say hey, buddy, what about you? And they cut to Brady, who says, “Hey now, how could I retire when I think I still got it!?” Hours after the news of Brady’s retirement dropped, I was sitting in a suburban movie theater, watching Tom Brady say that he doesn’t want to retire.
He never ends. We will be stuck with this dude forever, slinging those silly slant passes to undersized white receivers until the next plague takes us all. It won’t get him, of course. He will have transcended death by that point, a barely corporeal form kept alive by soil transmuted into blood, more plant than man, living in Peter Thiel’s eternal life arboretum a thousand miles below the surface of the Earth. Soon, he will spread to the surface and bloom across the planet, sole possessor of the world.
This is Corbin Smith. The author of this slanderous piece of shit.
Sunday, before the Grammys kicked off, I was researching some of the categories on some of the biggest music publications online. Rolling Stone being amongst them of course.
Picture my surprise when I saw that the #1 "trending" article of the weekend was the aforementioned takedown of Tom Brady by a guy I'd never heard of in my life.
I won't include it in it's entirety, but he continued to describe the movie, slurping the 4 geriatric stars of it and their prior works, (along with a bizarre ass-kissing rant of White Sox Dave's babe, Jane Fonda, that went on and on and on), before once again bringing it back to Brady and his disdain for him.
But we do not live in the abstract. We live in the real world, and in that world, Tom Brady is loathsome. He left his pregnant girlfriend for a supermodel, then burned down his family because he wanted to play in the NFL at 46. Lost a buttload of his (and his ex-wife’s) money in a wild crypto scam. Stuck a Trump hat in his locker, right at the dawn of that whole thing, either because he was too blinkered to know that Trump was the tip of a fascist spear or because he is actually an on-the-low fascist. He has empowered and profited off of health-grifting, fucking with his less fortunate teammates’ careers in the process. Charity fraud. Cheated on the field, twice. Kisses his kids on the lips, which is fine I guess, but also weird.
Brady would sit in his never-collapsing pocket, waiting for one of his dumb little receivers to get open, throw one of those stupid little slant passes, move the chains, rinse and repeat on and on forever. While he won like this, everyone else in the NFL was trying shit. Quarterback calling their own plays as a matter of course, wandering out of the pocket, bombing down the field like lunatics. These were wild times for football, but New England was not into any of that. Their victories weren’t beautiful or inspiring. They were rote, inevitable, dull fucking bullshit and everyone who isn’t from Boston or Tampa is glad it’s over forever.
The NFL, who has to carry this fucking guy around with them from here on out, wants you to feel like Tom Brady is a man just like you. Instead, you come face to face with a horror show who appears to have no idea how human beings talk. It is as if the simulacrum died, became a lich, sewed together a Tom Brady skinsuit, and had a little conversation with Lily Tomlin. I wanted to leap through the screen and save her from that monster who was calculating how many years he could devour off her life without anyone noticing. He is a blood-curdling, inhuman screen presence.
Vancouver has always been a place I've heard is stunningly beautiful, and I've wanted to visit. Just never had the chance.
Upon reading Mr. Corbin's piece however, I feel like I need to book a plane ticket there for tomorrow to fly there and ask him to repeat these words to my face.
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What a fucking keyboard coward.
First thing's first. What fucking game were you watching bro?
Brady would sit in his never-collapsing pocket, waiting for one of his dumb little receivers to get open, throw one of those stupid little slant passes, move the chains, rinse and repeat on and on forever.
The man was sacked five times in that game. You said so yourself a few paragraphs prior.
The movie tracks the events and outcome of Super Bowl LI. At first, the New England Patriots get the shit kicked out of them by the Falcons. It’s hilarious. The movie shows NFL Films footage of Brady getting knocked into the dirt on the big screen, and reader, I actually cheered.
And stupid little slant passes?
You conveniently left out the greatest catch in Super Bowl history that Julian Edelman made 30 yards downfield with the game (and comeback) weighing in the balance?
Secondly, I also saw the movie, and as much as I wanted to hate it, I didn't.
Now, was it "must-see" or something I recommend you head out to a theatre to catch? Not at all. But was it the worst movie ever (which it appeared it was going to be from its trailer)? Far from it.
(Sidebar - Sally Fields, for her age, is still a very attractive older woman. No plastic surgery for the win.)
If we're being honest and want to talk about what "ruined" the movie, the last thing you can point your finger at was Brady.
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Tell me you shrieked every time you saw White Sox Dave's babe Jane Fonda's avatar/AI face. Tell me the two masshole podcast guys couldn't have been more cringe. Tell me the dance sequence in front of the security guard wasn't all-time bad. But don't tell me Tom Brady's 10 lines of dialogue in this movie "ruined" it, you putz.
Honest question for you Corbin, who hurt you? Did Tom Brady bang your wife? Or your mom? Where does all this hatred come from?
This whole thing lately of piling on Brady once again, like we're in the eye of the storm of Deflategate all over again, is so peculiar.
Jerry weighed in on it yesterday -
The takes on his football greatness are one thing. The personal attacks, such as this, are another.
We're not talking about one of our last remaining heroes here. A pro athlete we can all still look up to, and tell our kids they can look up to, and be proud of. A guy who defied all the odds to become the greatest to ever do it, but who also never even came close to sniffing any problems with the law, any scandals off the field, etc. The worst thing tarnishing his legacy is a fabricated concoction of lies the NFL used to distract us all from the major CTE class action suit and studies coming out at the time, and redirect focus to the greatest player, on the greatest team, and air pressure. And everybody fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
Now, of course, everybody is a relationship expert and feels obliged to weigh in no Tom Brady the family man and husband.
In case you somehow thought I was blowing this all out of proportion, Corbin managed to sneak in one last shot at TB12 in his closing. Being sure to let us all know the stark difference between (known adulterer, gambling addict, horrible teammate, and ruthless businessman) Michael Jordan, and the true villain, Tom Brady.
Michael Jordan, the finest basketball player who ever lived, is more than willing to let you in on his little secret: he’s a freak, driven by ineffability that even he doesn’t quite understand. Everyone knows Tom Brady is a freak. They know it from his actions, from watching him shift around uncomfortably in his human skin, from the way he would dully carve up superior squads in high-leverage situations while being unaffected by context. But when it comes time to sit for the portrait, to give the interview, to appear in a movie, he just acts like this whole thing, his whole thing is just normal. “I’m just a guy, inspired by normal stuff, like you, the audience. I have normal hobbies and normal proclivities,” while cockroaches pour out of his mouth. Making a warm movie about friendship as a tribute to this weirdo is an impossible task.
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I think the thing I'm most blown away by is the fact a publication like Rolling Stone published something like this. I don't think KFC, and all of his pent-up Jets frustration, at the height of his blogging powers, could be capable of something so cowardly, off-base, and frankly, plain fucked up.
p.s. - I wonder what Jann Werner thinks about what "Rolling Stone" has become. I read his new memoir over the holidays, "Like A Rolling Stone" and was really impressed.
He didn't like the biography done on him, even though he authorized it, so he wrote his own. It documents how he co-founded the magazine in the 60s, discovered and hired the great Annie Leibovitz to shoot its covers, and how the magazine became and was for a long period of time, the defining voice of not just rock and roll, but an entire generation. I know a lot of people hate on Rolling Stone nowadays, but there's no arguing the role it played in American media and music history. If you're a music fan, or like biographies, it's a great read.